A new report from the Iowa Department of Management says drug treatment programs in the state’s prisons are having "little effect" on inmates.
Jeanette Bucklew, Deputy Director of Offender Services for the Iowa Department of Corrections, says the department currently have 17 drug treatment programs in place, designed to serve 2,000 inmates a year.
Bucklew says they are only serving about 40 percent of the prison population that has a "drug treatment need." The corrections department is already in the process of reviewing several of the programs.
"The report validates several areas of improvement that we were already focused on," Bucklew says, "and we will definitely continue to very aggressively move forward in those areas."
Bucklew says she’s not overly surprised with the findings. "It’s the first time we’ve ever had the data base and have the Department of Management to analyze that data base, so it’s a great opportunity."
About 80 percent of the inmates in Iowa’s prisons are identified as having problems with drug or alcohol abuse.